KABUL - The same Taliban that banned
television while in power in Afghanistan from
1996-2001 now have a presence on about 30% of more
than 4,000 jihadist websites and radio stations,
capitalizing on the vulnerability of poor Afghans
fed up with a weak central government that has
failed to deliver security and basic services.
Anti-government leaflets and pictures are
in distribution in the south of the country. And
the movement has the added advantage of being able
to speak in the local Pashtun language while
manipulating the flow and
content of information in areas composed of
largely illiterate farmers prone to intimidation,
according to security experts.
Videos of
Iraqi beheadings are in circulation, an about-face
from the old Taliban, which viewed such
technologies to be against Islam. Last year, a man
from Khost province appeared in the first-ever
video testimony of an Afghan suicide bomber before
he blew himself up at a Kabul military training
center, killing 13 people.
Even elusive
Taliban chief Mullah Omar is featured in one video
recording, apparently surveying insurgent forces
and inspecting mortar equipment at the front line
of a battleground.
Taliban militants have
also set up fake checkpoints on critical roadways
such as the Kabul-Kandahar highway, killing
Afghans they accuse of collaborating with the
state or international forces.
The Center
for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) in Kabul, a
think-tank that focuses on terrorism and security
analysis, documented one instance in which
clean-shaven Taliban disguised as police pulled
over a bus and asked passengers if they worked for
the local government. Those who stepped forward
were executed.
Roving bands are known stop
vehicles and confiscate mobile telephones,
punishing people they determine to have Western or
government contacts. According to CAPS, in some
places "Taliban tokens" are issued to highway
travelers to monitor human traffic and symbolize
the movement's primacy in certain areas.
Once alien to Afghanistan, suicide
terrorism is being used with greater frequency to
target international forces, Afghan police and
civilians. According to CAPS, 49 suicide attacks
have been recorded so far this year. This amounts
to more than the sum total of all such attacks
recorded in Afghan history.
Most alarming,
US military figures indicate that almost 85% of
suicide casualties to date have been civilians, as
insurgents try to plant fear in regions where they
do not have the upper hand.
The
suicide-bombing phenomenon began on September 9,
2001, when two Arab al-Qaeda operatives posing as
journalists killed charismatic Northern Alliance
commander Ahmad Shah Masoud, according to CAPS
director Hekmat Karzai. A steady rise has been
documented each year since as Taliban and other
militants have regrouped in lawless areas inside
the Pakistani border, where al-Qaeda-linked
jihadis - some with Iraq experience - have
promoted the efficacy of suicide and
remote-controlled bombing along with Internet and
video propaganda.
Joanna Nathan, a
Kabul-based senior analyst with the International
Crisis Group, told Asia Times Online that the
Taliban had turned to suicide terrorism to
cultivate fear in areas where they did not yet
have a substantial presence. "At the very least,
it shows they're learning from Iraq," she said.
To emphasize the grassroots nature of
their insurgency, Taliban leaders claim that 250
of their would-be suicide bombers are Afghans.
Government officials insist that non-Afghans are
behind the majority of attacks conceived and
committed.
Taliban insurgents have
considerably improved on the Kalashnikov rifles
and makeshift landmines of yesteryear. They now
use more advanced weaponry, diversified
communications, and increasingly lethal tactics to
hold hostage vast swaths of southern Afghanistan.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led
forces tasked with stabilizing the country have
met stiff resistance from emboldened Taliban
militants all year, facing off in pitched battles
that military officials have called the fiercest
fighting since the ultra-fundamentalist movement
was toppled in a US-led offensive five years ago
for harboring al-Qaeda operatives.
With
their proximity to lawless tribal areas along the
Afghan-Pakistani border, Kandahar and Helmand
provinces remain Taliban strongholds NATO forces
are struggling to tame. Recently a US military
official said nine of 21 districts in Ghazni
province, about 160 kilometers south of Kabul, had
"significant Taliban influence".
A damning
new report by the Senlis Council, an international
policy think-tank that follows Afghanistan
closely, says the Taliban have de facto control
over the southern half of the country and continue
to gain ground. The report blames failed
counter-narcotics and military policies for
boosting Taliban influence among impoverished
farmers without an alternative means of survival.
Military operations have cost US$82.5
billion since 2002, the report notes, compared
with a mere $7.3 billion spent on development and
reconstruction. This translates to a 900%
disparity.
But NATO and Afghan officials
insist the Taliban's willingness to kill civilians
indiscriminately will ultimately backfire and
erode any semblance of a rural support base.
An International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) spokesman told Asia Times Online that
despite more sophisticated and aggressive Taliban
fighting tactics, the modus operandi that
"so long as they kill an international soldier
every now and then it's okay to take out Afghans
will just not sit well with [Islamic] clerics and
the better part of the population".
Indeed, a comprehensive study of 91
insurgencies after World War II conducted by Seth
Jones, a counterinsurgency analyst at the Rand
Corporation think-tank, showed that groups that
committed mass civilian killings were the most
likely to fail.
This does not absolve
international forces of the need to meet the
resurgent Taliban head-on with vigilant
counterinsurgency operations and fast-track
development aid for the foreseeable future,
according to the ISAF spokesman. "Never
underestimate your enemy, and your enemy always
gets a vote," he said.
Jason
Motlagh is deputy foreign editor at United
Press International in Washington, DC. He has
reported freelance from Saharan Africa, Asia and
the Caribbean for various US and European news
media.
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